"Knitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... somebody, and the painter could not flatter himself that the somebody was Mrs. Morrison, the only other person in the room beside the artist and his subject. The mother looked up slightly, and without pausing in her knitting—'It's no wonder you're cold,' she said, sharply, 'when you wear such ridiculous ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... met my eyes, of the two women in their room; it was a scene such as Flemish painters have reproduced so faithfully for us, that I admired in its delightful reality. The mother, with the kind smile upon her lips, sat knitting stockings by the dying fire; Pauline was painting hand-screens, her brushes and paints, strewn over the tiny table, made bright spots of color for the eye to dwell on. When she had left her seat and stood lighting my lamp, one must have been under the yoke of a terrible ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity pretend to beside their multiplicity! All threading and knitting and weaving do their fingers understand: thus do they make the hose ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the screen, on the side of it away from the bed and near the fire (in times of stress Nellie would not rely on radiators) sat old Mrs.. Machin, knitting. She was a thin, bony woman of sixty-nine years, and as hard and imperishable as teak. So far as her son knew she had only had two illnesses in her life. The first was an attack of influenza, and the second was an attack of acute rheumatism, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... early part of this year 1812, there had been great riots in the North; great mischief was done at and near Nottingham, by the Luddites destroying knitting frames. On the 9th of January, a number of those Luddites were taken up at Nottingham, for breaking frames, and they showed a spirit of resistance, and had several skirmishes with the military. On the 16th of March, the Spanish constitution was settled by the Cortes, which Cortes abolished the Inquisition ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... and told him of Stella's illness, of the disappearance of her mother and her return. Of Patsy's suggestion she did not speak. It would be too much for the poor boy, who sat, knitting his brows over her tale, his face changing as he looked down at the cigarette between his fingers. He had interjected one breathless question. Was Stella better? Was she in any danger? And his mother had answered that Dr. Costello was satisfied ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... burning in a cornet to enable the surgeon or the nurse to find their way to her. She was alone in her favorite little wicker-work chair, with the doleful white bandage over her eyes—to all appearance quite content, busily knitting! ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... well-known door of his father's house in the market-place. The servant who opened the door bowed respectfully to the gallant stranger who was inquiring for Mistress Deane, and Jack had actually entered the parlour, where his mother was sitting with her knitting in hand, and been desired to take a seat, when he wonderfully astonished the old lady by springing up and throwing his arms round her neck. She knew him then well enough; and after giving him a maternal embrace in return, holding him by both hands, she looked again and again into his honest countenance, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... subsistence from other sources, its remuneration may be lower almost to any extent than the wages of equally severe labor in other employments. The principal example of the kind is domestic manufactures. When spinning and knitting were carried on in every cottage, by families deriving their principal support from agriculture, the price at which their produce was sold (which constituted the remuneration of their labor) was often so low that there would have been required great perfection of machinery to undersell it. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... starting from sleep with a cry of alarm; prolonged screaming without any obvious cause; moaning and drowsiness; rolling the head from side to side on the nurse's arm, or thrusting it back against the pillow; knitting the brows and aversion from light, with heat of head, and constant carrying the little hand up to it; half closing ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... that I went down to see father, whom I have had to neglect of late, baby has so used up both time and strength.. I found him and Martha engaged in what seemed to be an exciting debate, as Martha had a fiery little red spot on each cheek, and was knitting furiously. I was about to retreat, when she got up in a flurried way and went off, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... people did not "call," they went "visitin'." The women took their knitting and stayed all the afternoon and sometimes all night. No one owned a carriage. Each family journeyed in a heavy farm wagon with the father and mother riding high on the wooden spring seat while the children jounced up and down on the hay in the bottom of the box or clung ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... up I generally like to have a chat with her myself. It does me good to see her bonny Scotch face, and hear the sweet kindly "Scot's tongue;" besides which she is my great instructress in the mysteries of knitting socks and stockings, spinning, making really good butter (not an easy thing, madam), and in all sorts of useful accomplishments; her husband is the head shepherd on the next station. They are both very fond of reading, and it was quite pretty to see the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... Caravan's female friends and neighbors soon began to come in, and begged to be allowed to see the body. There had been a scene at the hairdresser's, on the ground floor, about the matter, between husband and wife, while he was shaving a customer; for while she was knitting the woman had said: "Well, there is one less, and as great a miser as one ever meets with. I certainly was not very fond of her; but, nevertheless, I must go and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... energy and yet so helpless, and the daughter so discouraged with her pathetic little shop and no customers to speak of. I did not know what to say till 'Grammer Miller,' as the children call her, happened to say, when she took up her knitting after the lecture, 'If folks who go spendin' money reckless on redic'lus toys for Christmas only knew what nice things, useful and fancy, me and Almiry could make ef we had the goods, they'd jest come round this corner and buy 'em, and keep me out of a Old Woman's Home ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... the lacemaker appeared on the threshold, with her bonnet sideways over her ear and her neckerchief very much creased. Seeing her, my mother frowned and let slip three meshes of her knitting. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... larger than the negative and cut a small hole in it, moving it in front of the light so as to throw the latter only upon the portions needing the extra printing. Still another modification is where a portion only needs holding back. Here we use a small piece of paper or cardboard stuck on a knitting needle, moving the latter so that it will not intercept the light too long ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... a Complex?" Reduced to its lowest terms, a complex is a group. It may be simply a group of associated movements, like lacing one's shoes or knitting; it may be a group of movements and ideas, like typewriting or piano-playing, which through repetition have become automatic or subconscious; it may be merely a group of ideas, such as the days of the week, the alphabet or the multiplication table. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... gifts among men, the only appropriate comparison I can find for her is, to liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... picked up her knitting bag and Polly followed her to a sheltered corner where Molly and Mary were playing with a store of pebbles they had ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... knitting needles with almost lightning rapidity, and the exercise seemed to give relief to the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... of the Armenian women of the middle and lower classes consists principally in knitting socks—one sees rows of matrons and girls sitting on the doorsteps busily employed thus,—and in various forms of culinary instruction. But the better class woman is well educated in European fashion, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... that the United States has done to assist in bringing the war to its successful close, from the adoption of the selective draft down thru the management of the training camps, the operation of the railroads, conservation of food and fuel, to the knitting of a pair of socks and the sale of a thrift stamp, what shall be said of the success or failure of our schools? Every man, woman, and child in this gigantic work, from President Wilson down to the colored bootblack who saved his nickels to buy a stamp, or ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the story the girls had settled themselves with their knitting at Aunt Cattie's feet, and Archie, their brother, at her elbow, his eyes fixed on Aunt Cattie's animated face, and his ears "bristled up," as Millie expressed it, in expectation of her promised narrative. It ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... respect to highways Virginia remains a backward State. But who wants to ride always over oiled roads, always to hotels with marble lobbies, or big white porches full of hungry-eyed young women, and old ladies, knitting? Only the standardized tourist. And I am not ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... woman and of a seven-year-old girl. These were in prison with her because she had no one to leave them with. She was serving her term of imprisonment for illicit sale of spirits. She stood a little further from the window knitting a stocking, and though she listened to the other prisoners' words she shook her head disapprovingly, frowned, and closed her eyes. But her seven-year-old daughter stood in her little chemise, her flaxen hair done up in a little pigtail, her blue eyes fixed, and, holding the red-haired ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the sole judge of that, madam," I retorted, with some dignity. "By the way," I went on, knitting my brows, "how am I to get into your side of the castle? Schmick says ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... little voice that ever was heard. It had a tinkling sound, such as Susan had often made when she tied her mother's gold thimble to a string and struck it with a knitting-needle. Just as she was wondering where it came from, a little old woman stepped from behind one of the andirons and shook the ashes from ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... after her fashion, still knitting; 'Well, I think of it. Yes, I don't know, Mr. Philip; but only it feels to me strangely,— Like to the high new bridge they used to build at, below there, Over the burn and glen, on the road. You won't understand me..... Sometimes I find myself dreaming ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to tell you," he said, gayly; "but we are not alone," he added, stopping short, as his eyes rested on the sinister face of an old woman, humbly attired, who was busily engaged in knitting, not far ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the Reverend Doctor Brown, Up rose the Doctor's "winsome marrow;" The lady lay her knitting down, Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow; Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, Pundit or papist, saint or sinner, He found a stable for his steed, And welcome for himself, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a crisp day in late September, and a pale yellow sun was spread thin over the carpet of yellow leaves with which the wide lawn was covered. In the upper corridor of the west wing, grouped about the window-seat with their embroidery or knitting, the young nurses were talking together in low tones during the hour of the patients' siestas. The two graduates, dark-eyed efficient girls, with skilled delicate fingers taking precise stitches in the needlework before them, were in full uniform, but the younger ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... finished her tea, picked up the dropped stitches in Aunt Nellie's piece of knitting, carried a message to the cook, then went out into the garden. She wanted to be alone for a little while. There was a retired corner among the bushes by the wall overlooking the river. She had placed a box here for a seat, and called it her hermitage. Even Merle ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the rays of the autumn sun; I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children about my knee and their arms about me; I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than have been that imperial impersonation of force ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Hephzibah was in the sitting-room, reading and knitting a stocking, a stocking for me. She did not need to use her eyes for the knitting; I am quite sure she could have ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... quarter. Just then it was deserted, owing to the attraction of the execution close by. The man who had just left the square proceeded slowly, attentively reading all the inscriptions on the doors. He stopped at Number 75, where on the threshold of a shop sat a stout woman busily knitting, over whom one read in big yellow letters, "Widow Masson." He ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... closely united as now. Every new railway is a muscle of iron knitting together the joints of the Union, and no other nation has a railway service equal to that of America. Railways span the continent from New York to the Golden Gate. The traveler retires to rest ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... is in a quiet way; she has given over reading and working, and even her knitting, as useless; and she now sits all day long at the chimney corner twiddling her thumbs, and waiting, as she says, for the millennium. Poor thing! she is very foolish with her ideas upon this matter, but as usual I let her have her own way in every thing, copying ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is, I don't think so," answered Billie, knitting her brows in an effort to think whether Connie had ever said anything on this point. She had never even thought to ask if "Uncle Tom" was married. "Why, no, of course he can't be," she answered herself and Teddy at the same ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... from the bride, nor a pair of gorgeous screens from Matilda; but that what was dwelt upon were some sketches in Wrangerton Park, and the most prized of all was a little pair of socks, in delicate fancy knitting, for Johnnie. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the big plate o' potatoes and gravy and mate she gave the dog, and the cake she threw in the fire to get red of it," said Mary, who was knitting ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... early part of '45,—I think in April,—when we were all gathered together, discussing, as usual, the possibility of leading a life in accordance with Nature. Abel Mallory was there, and Hollins, and Miss Ringtop, and Faith Levis, with her knitting,—and also Eunice Hazleton, a lady whom you have never seen, but you may take ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... object in view, we took nine children from our county house (Lenawee), and I taught them, with our four children of school age, four hours each day. The balance of the day was divided for work and play. The girls I taught house-work, sewing, and knitting. The boys were taken into the farm work by my husband and brother Harvey Smith. As our county superintendents of the poor gave us no aid, we found our means insufficient to continue our work on this plane. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... he hang me like a dog?" asked the Rapparee, knitting his shaggy eyebrows, and turning upon him ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... be told, just mere outlines to give color and force to the child's building, and connect it with his experience. If it is an armchair, grandmother may sit in it knitting the baby's stocking. If it is a well, describe the digging of it, the lining with stones or brick, the inflowing of the water, the letting down of the bucket and long chain, the clear, cool water coming up from the deep, dark hole in the ground on a hot summer's ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... alone, knitting comforters for the Preventorium patients. Like many another elderly person, her usual retiring hour was later than that of the younger members of her household, undoubtedly due to the frequent cat-naps snatched from ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... my childhood ... across the bridge that Elton had helped build, the new bridge that spanned the Hickory River, and over the railroad tracks, stood a news-stand, that was run by an old, near-sighted woman. As she sat tending counter and knitting, I bought her books ... but for each dime laid down before her, I stole three extra thrillers from under her ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... not keep from hearing and he was glad of the little affair with the two hostile bands, knitting as it did their friendship with the Mohawks. But he too, since he had penetrated the Iroquois spirit and saw as they did, felt the great and momentous nature of the crisis. While the nations of the Hodenosaunee might decide whether ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... being reminded of it. Grandma liked to talk as much as grandpa liked to keep silent; and always, to the running accompaniment of her tongue, she kept her hands busied, whether "puttering about" in her house or flower-garden, or crocheting "tidies," or knitting little mittens, or creating the multi-coloured paper-flowers which helped make her ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... invitations to the whole family, which I concluded would not be advisable: there are so many of them, and as they would not be acquainted with the rest of the company, it seemed best not to have any of them. I thought, too, of old Mrs. Joyce, who sometimes does quilting and knitting for me, but she has a large family of grandchildren, some of whom she always drags with her when she goes to where there is any thing good to eat; and it would never do to have them poking their fingers into the refreshments. So it struck me that perhaps you might oblige me. You don't ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... continued until they were in the very presence of Mrs. Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was spoken Anne suddenly went down on her knees before the astonished Mrs. Rachel and ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in its grooves of beauty, and its very loveliness gave Dilly a pain at the heart. She remembered that this was the hour when her mother used to yawn over her long seam, or her knitting, and fall asleep by the window, while the bees droned outside in the jessamine, and a humming-bird—there had always been one, year after year, and Dilly could never get over the impression that it was the same bird—hovered ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... promised, foreseeing that so she might have a good deal more of the little man's company, if indeed he was in earnest; for she was very lonely, and was never so happy as when he was with her. She said she would get him some knitting-needles—wires she called them—that very evening; she had some wool, and if he came to-morrow, she would soon see whether he was old enough and clever enough to learn to knit. She advised him, however, to say ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... had ever heard people maintain that all that Pao-y excelled in was in knitting friendships with girls. But Pao-y had so far been loth, seeing that P'ing Erh was Chia Lien's beloved secondary wife, and lady Feng's confidante, to indulge in any familiarities with her. And being precluded from accomplishing the desire upon which his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... awakening all the secret poetry of one's soul. The gentle breath of the fields was wafted into the quiet drawing-room. The baroness and her husband were playing cards by the light of a lamp, and Aunt Lison was sitting beside them knitting; while the young people, leaning on the window sill, were gazing ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Settlement to them was in placing large and pleasant rooms with musical facilities at their disposal, and in reviving their almost forgotten enthusiams. I have seen sons and daughters stand in complete surprise as their mother's knitting needles softly beat time to the song she was singing, or her worn face turned rosy under the hand-clapping as she made an old-fashioned curtsy at the end of a German poem. It was easy to fancy a growing touch of respect in her ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... a short distance further, the woman paused before a house of much humbler appearance than the former one, and, encouraged by the motherly appearance of an elderly lady who sat knitting at her open door in the lingering twilight, she drew nigh to her, and asked if she would shelter herself and child ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Judith responded with exaggerated gratitude. "Now I must leave you. I promised Mrs. Weatherbee to go to her room before dinner. She just finished a perfectly darling white silk sweater she's been knitting for her niece. It has a pale blue collar and it's a dream. She wants to try it on me. I am about the same ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... right,' remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and knitting his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. 'You're right, Oliver, you're right; they WILL think you have stolen 'em. Ha! ha!' chuckled the Jew, rubbing his hands, 'it couldn't have happened better, if we had chosen ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... says old Miss Gower in a sepulchral tone. She has been sitting in a corner near them, knitting sedulously until now. But now she uplifts her voice. She uplifts her eyes, too, and fixes them on Mrs. Chichester the frivolous. "Do your own words never make you shiver?" asks ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... no unemployed. The old women of the poor went daily to an empty court-room where they sat in the little amphitheater sewing or knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting and making uniforms with the same facility that men had long since acquired, or running sleeping bags through sewing-machines at the rate of thousands a day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... She could hardly have explained her disinclination. Was it that his company had grown so stimulating and interesting to her, that it made her think too much of other things than the war?—and so it seemed to separate her from George? Her own quiet occupations—the needlework and knitting that she did for a neighbouring war workroom, the gathering and drying of the sphagnum moss, the visiting of a few convalescent soldiers, a daily portion of Wordsworth, and some books about him—these things were within her compass George ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looked on, papa came with provisions. At one time the food consisted of green worms about twice as large as a common knitting needle. Three or four of them he held crosswise of his beak, and gave one to each nestling. The next course was a big white grub, which he did not divide, but gave to one, who had considerable difficulty in ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... dreaded their coming, and when they did call, endured their presence as an unavoidable evil. The worthy matrons were all much older than herself and, while sitting over their cakes, stewed fruit, and hippocras, knitting, spinning or netting, talked of the hard times during the siege, of the cares of children and servants, washing and soap-making, or subjected to a rigid scrutiny the numerous incomprehensible and reprehensible acts other women were said to have committed, to be committing, or to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I feel, better than I can myself," answered his sister, knitting rapidly. "If it hadn't been for me, I know you'd have been able to lay up money, and have something to carry you through the winter. It's hard to be a burden upon your relations, and bring ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... Jolliffe and tell her of the danger which threatened him, she might refuse permission to fight at all, or, at the very least, she would see that he had proper assistance. So into the house he went, and the first person he found was Hazel, who was knitting her pretty forehead over the Latin exercise which had been given her as ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the manse by the fireside sitting, Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log. You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting, Silent both, and between you, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dear?" said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting her thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. "Do you love him sufficiently? That's ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... heard him say, "and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except Schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... innocent exterior lurked Tom Hood's joke. The fish was made of two pieces of wood, like Fig. 2, glued or gummed together, only one of which was attached to the line, and on this piece was burned, with a red-hot knitting-needle, the words, "O, you April fool!" Of course, after the sportsman had dragged this about in the water for some time, the glue melted, the loose half of the bait floated away, and when he hauled in his line to see how things were getting along, he discovered the inscription, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... instance," continued the deputy, his face knitting at the thought that he had to confess another mystery to which he had no solution, "it is something quite different. You know that all along the shore on this side of the island are old, dilapidated and, some of them, ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... sat knitting busily in the sun one bright morning the week before Christmas. The snow lay deep, and the hard crust glistened like silver. All at once she heard little sighs of grief outside her door. When she opened it there sat Peter and Jimmy Rice, two very poor little boys, ...
— The Night Before Christmas and Other Popular Stories For Children • Various
... of the "Old Ark"; the time is evening. The rain is falling outside, yet inside the old ark all is snug and comfortable. The fire is burning brightly on the hearth, and Mother Gummidge sits by it knitting. Ham has gone out to fetch little Em'ly home from her work,—and the old fisherman sits smoking his evening pipe by the table near the window. They are expecting Steerforth and Copperfield in to spend the evening. Presently a knock ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... people need kindling wood the worst, so there will be enough to feed them," answered the good wife brightly, as she too aroused and began knitting with ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... corner in the little cottage by the lake, gazing at the glowing logs with the earnest expression of one whose thoughts were far away. Her kind face was paler than usual, and her hands rested idly on her knee, grasping the knitting wires to which ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Shakspere made his forest drama, "As You Like It," the picaresque, harum-scarum story of adventure, "Jack Wilton," the prototype of later books like "Gil Blas" and "Robinson Crusoe,"—these were the early attempts to give prose narration a closer knitting, a more organic form. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... friend Tommy. Just before I sailed I went to pay his mother a visit. I found the widow sitting, as was her wont, knitting at her window, waiting for her son's return. I went not empty-handed, for besides my pasty, which I had saved, I had bought a loaf and a lump of cheese and a bundle of lollipops at Bideford. First presenting her with these treasures and emptying my pockets of the very small amount ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... then, being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine government, and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to that sheltering power under which themselves enjoyed the leisure of a thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on the other hand, what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists? Everywhere it has passed for a lawful postulate, that the Saracen conquests prevailed, half by the feebleness of the Roman government at Constantinople, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... and put on my slippers, and get into bed while the mates overhead are swabbing the decks and heaving the lead and baling the bilge-water up with their dippers; and when they have gotten the vessel to going, and settled all down to their knitting and sewing, and the twenty-third mate, who is always so late, has learned what is meant by a third and last warning, I'll turn up the gas, take a look at the glass, and read me the Life of Old Chew until morning!——And so, sir," continued Mr. Mizzen, walking towards the street door, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... never ceased mourn, mourn, mourn, wail, wail, wail, day and night, and whatever food he took he never was satisfied, but pined and peaked and dwined from day to day, so as his little legs was like knitting pins. The lady was nigh upon death as it seemed, so that no one took note of the child at first, but when Madge had time to look at him, she saw how it was, as plain as plain could be, and told his father. But men are unbelieving, my dears, and always think they know better than them as ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worke then a sacke spunne for broad cloth in a grosser threed, so a sacke of wool turned into those Bonets doth set many more poore people on worke, then a sacke turned into Kersies, by reason of the knitting. And therefore if you can indeuour that, you worke great effect. And no doubt that a maruellous vent may be found out of them into Afrike by the way of Alexandria, and by Alcayer [Footnote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... that, now," replied Ben, knitting his brows, and gazing earnestly at the forebrace, which happened to be conveniently in front of his eyes; "see here, s'pose, for the sake of argiment, that you've got a mothers an' she marries a second time—which some mothers is apt to do, you know,—and ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... by the guidwife, who paused, as she put it down, to wipe her eyes with her apron. She gave John Paul one furtive glance and betook herself again to her knitting with a sigh, speech having failed her likewise. The captain grasped up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not one art practised by ladies which is more deservedly popular than Knitting. It is so easy, requires so little eyesight, and is susceptible of so much ornament, that it merits the attention of every lady; and in giving instructions for acquiring it, we add, also, such admirable diagrams of the various processes, we are sure ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... see you knitting, Jessie," he said gently "it is a peaceful art, untouched by worldly cares. I wish I could hear hens cackling, and the drowsy sounds of a farmyard, all set in nature's honest key. I'm tired of people and machinery and telephones ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... come by the news, Joan never doubted its truth. He would be among the first to go, that she had always known, but would he make no sign, hold out no hand, before he left? The War was shaking down barriers, bringing together families who perhaps had not been on speaking terms for years, knitting up old friendships. Would he not give her some chance to explain, to set herself right in his eyes? That was all she asked for; not that he should love her again, but just that they should be friends, before he went out into the darkness of ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... my knitting-work and went up into the gallery," said Mrs. Partington, the day after visiting one of the city courts; "I went up into the gallery, and after I had adjusted my specs, I looked down into the room, but I couldn't see any courting going on. An old gentleman ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... with a zeal that brought a flush to his cheeks, he was copying, in a very fair hand a page from a French dictionary. Near the bed, in the shade, sat a poorly but neatly clad woman about forty years of age, who was knitting industriously ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... thin, wiry, and muscular, wears habitually a close-buttoned military tunic, and always has a stern expression, the force of which is considerably augmented by a bristly moustache resembling a shoe-brush. As he paces up and down the room, knitting his brows and gazing at the floor, he looks as if he were forming combinations of the first magnitude; but those who know him well are aware that this is an optical delusion, of which he is himself to some extent a victim. He is quite innocent of deep thought and concentrated ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the little window. It would never do; she had forgotten how dusty and blurred it was, and she took her cloth and burnished the panes. Then she scoured the table, then the floor, then blackened the stove before she sat down to her knitting. And of course the lily had done it all, just by showing, in its whiteness, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of feature; he adores, with equal ardour, both young and old, nor is either often shocked by his visible preference of the other. I have seen a youthful beau kiss, with perfect devotion, a ball of cotton dropped from the hand of a lady who was knitting stockings for her grand-children. Another pays his court to a belle in her climacteric, by bringing gimblettes [A sort of gingerbread.] to the favourite lap-dog, or attending, with great assiduity, the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... passed the morning, after breakfast, in a room adjoining her own bed-room, in which she daily held deep debate with Griffiths, her factotum, respecting household affairs, knitting-needles, and her own little ailments and cossetings. Griffiths, luckily, was a woman of much the same tastes as her ladyship, only somewhat of a more active temperament; and they were most stedfast friends. It was ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... fingerwise, to have such control over his trained muscles that they will respond quickly and accurately to orders. Such training should be started in infancy,[62] in the form of guided play, as, for example, whittling, sewing, knitting, handling mechanical toys and tools, and playing musical instruments, and continued up to, and into, the ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... still in the room where the poets slept when I came quietly down. The old witch sat by a table with a lamp, knitting a splendid cloak of gold and green for a king that had been dead a ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... and travelled from town to town in New England, arousing the women to new effort. These might be seen, young and old, rich and poor, bearing bundles of blue flannel through the streets, and unaccustomed fingers knitting the coarse yarn, while the heart throbbed with anxiety for the dear ones gone to the war. A noble band of nurses volunteered their services, and the strife was as to which should go soonest and do the hardest work. Hannah E. Stevenson, Helen Stetson, and many another name became ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... lies in the severity of the effort to enjoy one's self. At our age the truest happiness lies in absorption in work,—a kind of active and bustling Nirvana. Having come to this conclusion, I pulled out the golf-stockings I am knitting for Ben, and fell to work, with the result that it was ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... was very pleasant to come back from his work, day after day, to these scenes; to which the woman fiercely retorted that it was all his own fault; and when he was gone, she sat for a time mechanically knitting, with the tears trickling down her cheeks, and every now and then glancing at the door. After which, with great secrecy, she helped herself to some spirits which she ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in a little room appropriated to her, knitting busily, and looking bright, and hale, and hearty. She rose up and dropped the young ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... near a work-table, knitting. The moment I appeared in the doorway she laid aside her work, and, rising, signed to me with a commanding gesture of her hand ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... fighting out his battle with an almost super-human courage. Bud knew that. It was written in every detail of his attitude. In the straining of his blue eyes, in the deep knitting of his fair strong brows, in the painful lines ploughing deeper and deeper about his mouth, and the set of his ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... This last, in truth, he did not expect, but still, if it came, it would be better than perturbations; they must be soothed at any cost. But how to incur this cost was a difficult question altogether. So, puffing, gazing into the fire, and knitting his brows, he sat ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... him three days since, and he asked me if I had been impressed lately with the idea vulgarly called Clarence Linden; and he then proceeded to inform me that he had heard the atoms which composed your frame were about to be resolved into a new form. While I was knitting my brows very wisely at this intelligence, he passed on to apprise me that I had neither length, breadth, nor extension, nor anything but mind. Flattered by so delicate a compliment to my understanding, I yielded my assent: and he then shifted his ground, and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down to my feet again, when I was soaring away too far and too fast. I'm poorly off, ma'am; but if you are knitting these for me, I shall certainly start on a firm foundation." And, leaning on Aunt Betsey's knee, she patiently discussed the wardrobe question ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... circulated round her stove more conveniently had her crinoline been of less dimensions. She bade me welcome very prettily, and went on with her cooking, talking the while, as though she were in the habit of entertaining guests in that way daily. The old woman sat in a corner knitting—as old women always do. The old man lounged with a grandchild on his knee, and the master of the house threw himself on the floor while the other child crawled over him. There was no stiffness or uneasiness in their manners, nor was there anything ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... rough fishermen sauntering on the quay with their jackets hanging loose from their shoulders, jacket and cap and hair all of the same dark-greenish sea-grey. But there is some life in the scene, more than is usual in Venice: the women are sitting at their doors knitting busily, and various workmen of the glass-houses sifting glass dust upon the pavement, and strange cries coming from one side of the canal to the other, and ringing far along the crowded water, from venders of figs and grapes, and gourds and shell-fish; cries partly descriptive of the eatables in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... between two pyramids of pink and blue packets of biscuits, one could always catch sight of the serious-looking Madame Desvarennes, knitting woollen stockings for her husband while waiting for customers. With her prominent forehead, and her eyes always bent on her work, this woman appeared the living ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... received aright and knitting two hearts into one is a thing of heaven, as rare in this world as a perfect love; both are the overflow of only very ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... carts usually spent their day on the Place de la Greve, beneath the platform of the guillotine, knitting and gossiping, whilst they watched the rows of tumbrils arriving with the victims the Reign of Terror claimed every day. It was great fun to see the aristos arriving for the reception of Madame la Guillotine, and the places close by the platform were very much sought after. Bibot, ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... ingenious arts of drawing, engraving, casting, painting, statuary, and sculpture; for the improvement of manufactures and machines, in the various articles of hats, crapes, druggets, mills, marbled-paper, ship-blocks, spinning-wheels, toys, yarn, knitting, and weaving. They likewise allotted sums for the advantage of the British colonies in America, and bestowed premiums on those settlers who should excel in curing cochineal, planting logwood-trees, cultivating olive-trees, producing myrtle-wax, making potash, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... if Utopian. Slow and sure successes of science and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Far off, yet surely to come,—surely for him,—a day to come when a pure social system should be universal, should have thrust out its fibres of light knitting into one the nations of the earth, when the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work, and stand up, knowing itself divine. "To insure to every man the freest development of his faculties": ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... in the right place. Heaven! at the best times she would do her knitting, and hand one a child every year! I'll marry when I can find a wife ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... my winter stockings. I got knitting needles and cards my own mother had and used. I got use for them. I wears clothes on my body in cold weather. One reason you young folks ain't no 'count you don't wear enough clothes when it is cold. I wear flannel clothes if I can get holt ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... to make her happy. Her face lighted. She sat knitting for an hour, silent and serene, while ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... buds were green. But there were black figures below them. The women who sat there all the afternoon, sewing, and knitting, or with idle hands in their laps, were clothed in widows' black. I glanced into the face of one of these figures as I passed. She was quite a girl to whom the spring-song should have called with a loud, clear note of joy. But her head drooped and her eyes were steadfast as they stared at the pathway, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... for a number of years," replied her mother, knitting her brows in an effort to recall the details of Billie's queer inheritance. "As I remember it, it is an old-fashioned rambling affair. It must have been considered rather handsome in its palmy years, and it has been in the Powerson family for generations. In fact, I believe it dates back to ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... entered the narrow passage-way in which she had seen Broussard and Mrs. Lawrence standing together, and it beat more as she walked into the little sitting-room, where Mrs. Lawrence sat in an arm chair at the window. She was evidently ill, and the knitting she was trying to do had fallen from her ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... sensuousness will continue to falsify the answer for a long time. As soon as man has begun to use his understanding and to knit together phenomena in cause and effect, the reason, according to its conception, presses on to an absolute knitting together and to an unconditional basis. In order merely to be able to put forward this demand man must already have stepped beyond the sensuous, but the sensuous uses this very demand ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and it's easier for me to go on than drop the needles for a fortnight or so and then find, on coming back, that you have been knitting a mitten when I had started the frame of a sock," Maria said, laughing; "make flower hay while the crop is to be had for the gathering, my lady! Another year you may not have such ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... again the theme of his speeches. His ideas on the subject of protecting and encouraging American manufactures were not derived from books, nor expressed in the language of political economy. At his own Kentucky home, Mrs. Clay, assisted by her servants, was spinning and weaving, knitting and sewing, most of the garments required in her little kingdom of six hundred acres, while her husband was away over the mountains serving his country. "Let the nation do what we Kentucky farmers are doing," ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... lower slopes of the mountain. Thence he commanded a near view of the convent. No change was visible in the grey, ghostly-looking edifice; so still was every thing about it, that it might have been deemed uninhabited but for the portress, who sat knitting in the shadow of the gateway, and for the occasional apparition of some ancient nun, showing her face, yellow and shrivelled as parchment, at a casement, or flitting with bowed head, and hands lost in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... as strong as I used to do. I've been breaking up this last year, just when we've been knitting the cracks in the building. What was in my mind is this—to leave you when I die the whole of my business to keep it a success, and get in the way of Belloc, and pay my wife so much a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unchanged, though we have made some progress in knitting. Forgive me, m'amie, but one does get so much into the despatch habit! The other day I'd a letter from Babs, in which she told me she'd "nothing fresh to report on her right wing" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various |
